giving sound to voiceless shadows
by Aiko Isari
Summary: AU. In which death took someone else and being well-functioning is a good lie. Or, Daigo tries to struggle on by himself. Loss spoilers.
1. For Heaven

_Warning for character death, trauma, PTSD, and auditory processing disorder. Also bad grief coping mechanisms._

* * *

1\. For Heaven

He took the rainbow lights for granted. He took the roar of power that sounded more like gobbledygook and his best English all rolled up into one and thought that would be just the end. The battle would end and he'd take her hand and they'd finally get to go home. Finally, they'd be together at home, just going home from a summer vacation that had gone on a little too long. Finally, finally, no more fighting. Just peace. Just pe-

But the iridescence lies for once. It hovers around him, glowing, glowing bright, washing around her as she stumbles back up, holds her Digivice as it crackles and sparks. She lets out a cry that may have been joy, but now it's just pain. Now it's just pleading.

Now it's just a single cry for help.

But he's all caught up in things. He can't answer. He can barely even move. His limbs are heavy and his friend is suspended like the puppets they all are in the end and he-

And the sound fades away. He can't make it out anymore, can't really make anything out except soft sobs. Megadramon is trying to look but he can't they can't-

"Please," he hears in more unfiltered nonsense sounds and then there's nothing again and by the time he is down and they're down, there's just a corpse with drying tears and golden light washing her away.

Bakumon has never not smiled before. He's been determined. He's grimaced hard, but he's never been this, never been so despairing. He shakes her with his hooves. He sobs. He screams. Her eyes are glassy in death and staring towards something at their left. Her Digivice is a charred hunk of plastic sparking with light. It crumbles when Daigo reaches for it.

By the time Daigo musters up the courage to touch her, his fingers pass through her bird arms. He crumples. The world gives beneath his feet -

And Nishijima Daigo, twenty-five years old, wakes up to the wind flowing through a window that should have been closed. He wakes up in a cold sweat that makes the dress shirt stick to his chest and his hair flies all about.

His dinner lays half-eaten and cold on the coffee table. The television talks about monster sightings and there's a long fizzled out beer that he always buys and never finishes on a coaster.

For a moment, he thinks someone is there. That someone is most decisively on the other side of his couch and watching him with disapproval. Or maybe it's concern. Maybe it's happiness. Of course, no one is actually there, but he's insane. There's something wrong with him.

Everyone has said so.

But this time when he reaches for his water, long fingers push it towards him. Long and slender and somewhat calloused, and yet here they are. They fade when his hands reach for them and there's no one there.

He blinks and Daigo thinks there's a smile there, hanging and waiting for him to say her name.

But he hasn't said her name in fifteen years. He doesn't think he can start again now.

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ Oops. I blame tumblr for this. I realllyyyy do. Please read and review, friends! It means a lot!

Challenges: Chapter Set Boot Camp '19', Ficletchap Competition. Season Rewrite Boot Camp prompt 'meddle', Diversity Writing H29.


	2. To Move the Earth

2\. To Move the Earth

Nishijima Daigo likes teenagers.

They're the closest thing to himself that he understands. He can't be around younger ones anymore. All they do is look like her, her and the light fading out from from her eyes and then from her body itself. It's an endless reminder of the time when he was twelve and his cousin had hugged him from behind. He remembers seeing her face and thinking there was a skull and hollering until he cried.

He likes teenagers. They don't look like him, but they're young enough he can pretend he understands their problems.

So when this fledgling organization offered to let him watch the current generation of Chosen Ones, Daigo jumps for it. He feels sickened with himself, but he does it.

If they end up like he did, with that much loss on their small shoulders, he doesn't think he'll forgive himself.

Well, anymore. He already doesn't really forgive himself as it is. He hates his own personal dramatics.

The children are in high school. Can they be called children anymore? He can't.

His Digivice beeps in his suitcoat. It's not his partner. He's long given up on hearing from him again. It's Bakumon, saying hello. It's Bakumon, wanting to talk to someone, anyone. To ask about her when there's nothing more to know. To say her name and make Daigo's head spin. He can't.

He just can't.

He isn't given a day off so he can help his boss and his family move in. He's just forced to show up there. Meiko has a timid smile, a smile that implied once she was braver than she is. If the looks her father gets are anything to go by, it is resentment and terror that keep her at bay now. He wonders what she'll be like when she's able to be brave.

He can guess probably not much good, or her father would let her be that way. No one likes a girl that has a spine and a heart. Except him, maybe.

He toys with his box of cake. Because this is what he has, some mild baking skills, college degrees, and a bad chunk of memories that he just can't put away.

Daigo delivers the cake, moves some boxes, and goes home. He passes by Yagami Taichi. The kid knows nothing. But as he goes, he thinks he hears _her_.

It's probably an illusion, but he can't just out and out give it up. That would involve sound soundness of mind and heart that he lacks.

Daigo watches the Chosen Children, watches them so much he can feel Taichi's indecision in his own bones.

"Just come up with something. Anything will do. It's not final."

In a way it is final, though.

"You'd never say that before."

He hears those words and doesn't answer them, cannot.

 _(Is he hallucinating them?)_

Gennai's last message sits in his inbox, open, waiting. Like an accusing mouth, full of words.

"I can bring her back to you. We can make this right. For Bakumon."

Daigo is under no illusion of who the words are actually for. But he wants to believe it.

Does he want to pay for it?


	3. One Must Pray

3\. One Must Pray

Meiko is a ball of nerves and fear. She visits him in his office every day.

"She won't come," she tells him. "I call and call and she runs away!" He gives her a cookie and she crumbles it without eating it. Nothing new there, though disappointing. He makes them himself.

Daigo can't understand that. Liollmon always came to him when called, at least until-

"I have a job to do now, I can't help-"

Until the little cub was an adult and had no time for children, had no time for anyone because that was just the way of the world. Adults had no children until they were parents and Digimon were never parents.

"We're keeping an eye out for her," he tells Meiko instead, words sounding like another language in his ears entirely. She smiles and plays with her hair. Daigo smiles in return and sends her away.

It's in Gennai's best interest to let Meicoomon wander, but it's not in his. It's not in Meiko's. It's not in Earth. Regardless, if he can't find her, he can't.

He hopes that he can.

…

Daigo is visiting the grave when he gets the call about Alphamon. He goes running, Digivice in his suit pocket despite its uselessness.

He knows, somehow, he knows that she's close by, that she's right beside him with her bird limbs that can handle anything that hurts except when they can't.

He thinks he hears Bakumon laughing in the flowers, laughing mad and simple and crying.

It all will turn into the rush of water into the toilet at the end of the night but for now he imagines her lavender shirt stained red and gray and her body covered in golden light.

 _Absence makes the heart grow fonder._

 _Laughter, tight laughter that stuck in her throat and only came out when she was close to feeling something else. Laughter full of unshed tears, small shoulders buried in determination and devotion._

 _Shoulders lost their hunch in death._

Thankfully, these children do not die. There are nine of them and there is strength in them from being together. He hasn't seen the others in a few years now. He hasn't wanted to to be honest. They worry. He's pretty sure one of them is dead. Not sure which one.

Daigo considers calling them, or sending them an email.

When work is over, he promises. He promises himself.

The air shifts about. The air twists and turns around against the blades striking each other in rapid cuts. Hesitation in one, distaste in the other and they continue and continue and no one is safe from them. No one wants to be near them.

All but him. The boys are close but Daigo wants to get closer. His heart is thumping in his ears and the old scars are making his bones flinch step by step but he wants to go right now. More than anyone, more than anything.

The portal opens almost unseen but Daigo is used to looking for things that aren't there. He steps forward on his fancy shoes and there she is, looking so small and fragile and like a corpse and then there's just an empty, destroyed mall area.

Also shouting. Lots of shouting.

Daigo flees from it.


	4. For Darkness and Light

4\. For Darkness and Light

She's right there and her eyes are rainbows. If he stretches his hand out, he can touch her hands with both of his longer ones. Her palms fit over one of his and overcome it, but just barely. The female Peter Pan, left to destroy and be destroyed.

Daigo opens his eyes to his empty bedroom and open window and breathes in so much air that he chokes for a few seconds. His eardrums ring and ring and no one picks up the phone.

Something passes by his window and then floats inside. He squints at it in the dark until he sees the cloud of smoke. Daigo tries to smile. It's easier than he thought it would be. "Bakumon."

The child digimon attempts to smile back. "Hey, Dai!" He exclaims. "I… I'm back for a bit."

"Why? Where've you been?" Daigo pours his friend some tea, who gulps it down in heavy glugs. He looks away nervously as he does so.

"Around," he says, cagey as always. "In the Digital World, helping out. I'm getting real good at cooking."

Daigo smiles and means it. "That's great."

…

He's sure if he asks, Bakumon would help. His love of Hime-chan is thicker than a whole pack of molasses. He'll do anything to see her again. But he doesn't. That would mean admitting he was doing something wrong, or accepting something wrong. HE's not sure he can. Bakumon may not be an innocent baby Digimon anymore, but he's still a child in a way, and he still looks at Daigo so highly. He's not sure he can make that faith go away.

And yet he seems a bit too close, too busy chugging tea and dripping it onto the coffee table and not talking. Bakumon always used to talk, babble on about anything he wanted for hours and hours. But he didn't. He just drinks his tea and watches Daigo work.

Then, instead of leaving, he says, "Everyone's acting strange."

Daigo looks up, pretending there's no sweat down his neck. "Really?" He sighs and this is real. "they don't talk to me."

"They should." Bakumon scoffs. "They're there, and you're here."

Don't he know it. "They've all always been kinda sorta stubborn." He slurps sme noodles.

Bakumon makes a face of fond exasperation. "Yeah, I know." He goes quiet. "Daigo?"

"Yeah?" He goes to put his plate away.

"Do you know how to bring Hime back?"

Daigo doesn't have to pretend to nearly drop the bowl. "What?"

"If anyone is looking, it's you, right!" Bakumon's big eyes fill with just as large tears. "You miss her too! You love her, right? I miss her! It shoulda been me! It shoulda!" He lifts his hooves and cries one sharp, lonely sound. Then he turns back to Daigo. "She's stuck there. She can't go anywhere. She can't do anything. That's not fair. Can't we help her?"

Daigo pauses, thinks, debates. Is this worth it? Is this right?"

He winces before he speaks. "There might be."

The smile he gets is almost worth it, almost.


	5. To Cry Together

5\. To Cry Together

Bakumon's happiness is lighter than air and clouds and dreams. For the first time in three years, Daigo finds himself dreaming of his best friend and it not being a nightmare. He hears her voice, soft with concern, feels her hands shaking him.

But in the end Daigo wakes up and wonders if dreaming of her care for him ending before her death is any better than her screaming for help, full of pain.

On impulse, he goes to the school festival. It feels good. He kissed a girl at his first cultural festival. He visited a haunted house because of one and decided never again.

Meicoomon finds him in the middle of the cafe section. Her cross eyes look at him with concern and suspicion. Tachikawa doesn't notice her, which Daigo can't help but wonder about. Don't they want their humans to see them? But then, Meicoomon only blinks at him and whines for a crepe.

Daigo laughs as quietly as possible because it's hard. Maki used to be just like that, so happy and sweet and good. Sure she was a troll but she was good.

"Sorry I wasn't at the hot spring," he says. He scratches her ears and reluctantly gives her a piece of his piece of cake. "A friend came over."

"Meiko worried!" is her only response. So simple. She was the most childish Adult level Daigo remembered ever coming across. "You're not mad at Mei are you?"

Daigo blinks. "Of course not! She's a good girl."

Meicoomon nods once. "Good!"

And that's all she says until four kids scramble into the 'Daters' cafe and she for some reason flees, laughing like a loon.

Daigo grins a bit too fondly and eats what's left of his cake.

Then Ichijouji Ken shows up, and this is not in the plan, not in the plan at all.

To be fair, Daigo is still not sure if there even is a plan or ever could be. At least not one that outright includes him.

She keeps whispering in his head. She keeps being dead and yet right there. Does that means she isn't dead? Or is he just finally going insane?

…

Leomon is dead.

For a horrible minute and a half, Daigo thinks that it's _his._

Then his logic returns and he knows it's not. But Ichijouji Ken looks at him, accusing and old, accusing and unforgiving as he holds Meicoomon gently in his arms.

It is not an avatar. He's sure of it.

He mouths a few words that Daigo doesn't want to think about and Leomon dies screaming in pain and betrayed by someone who he was in love with.

The similarities are too close.

But Bakumon comes back and he doesn't know so Daigo has to smile instead of scream.

Bakumon tells him the eggs are all gone. The babies are living by threads and the Digimon are killing each other. It's like the old days, the little Child says, like their old days.

Back when Daigo had been forced to hold a bowie knife.

"If we fix things, it'll really go back to that time," Daigo says softly, as if trying to tell himself no.

Bakumon just shrugs. "But Hime will be here."

She might be there. He doesn't know. Daigo swallows tears.

"Right," he agrees again, over and over. "Right. Okay."


	6. In Health and Distortion

6\. In Health and Distortion

As it turns out, rebooting is almost too easy. Homeostasis just needs to be afraid, if this mysterious emailer is anything to go by. Not afraid for itself, apparently it was incapable of selfless thought. He has no idea if that is true or not, as Hime-chan had always been the possessed one, the one with the open, bright heart. She was the one they had always wanted and it showed and stung. At any rate, Homeostasis only feared for the universe it was sworn to maintain.

Not fearing for yourself is very unhealthy. Daigo knows this better than most.

Still, the hard part is being willing to keep upsetting Meicoomon. He himself doesn't have to do much, as Ichijouji Ken (if that's him) certainly is doing it plenty with threats and whispers and other things.

"Mei!"

Her scream sounds like Bakumon, like a horror movie echo. Bakumon only watches, unimpressed.

"What's she so sad about?" he asks him after he gets them away. "Her Mei's still alive."

Daigo shakes his head. "But she could not be, at any given time."

Bakumon continues to frown. "But she's not _now_."

"She could be." Daigo replies, deciding to end this discussion before it gets any worse.

Meicoomon continues to scream, even as Bakumon continues to think. You would think one would block out the other. Apparently not.

* * *

"Well, isn't this a fine dilemma you've put us into."

The mysterious man is in his office, his office where no one should be able to get into without a specific, personal pass code.

"Are you Ken?" he asks, wanting to feel wary and only feeling tired.

The man shrugs. "I would be. You know, if you hadn't left him to die. Funny things happen to Dark Seeds when their hosts are at risk. Even dormant, they have an urge to… continue." He smiles. "So, for the moment, I suppose I am Ichijouji Ken."

Daigo learns from his past and avoids asking more stupid questions. "Is there really anything I can offer you?" Formal, business, adult tone against a childish dream. Suits them all, really.

Ken regards him through the glare of his modified sunglasses. He won't even remove them in the dark. "You didn't help us before. Why now? What do you get out of it?"

Well, the boy had to have gotten some intelligence before the Dark Seed. Daigo pretends the young man isn't trying to cut him to the bone. "Something I shouldn't have lost to begin with. Someone I miss."

Ken's eyes flickered, head tilting. "Is that so? Is everyone else worth that?"

Of course not. Never. Daigo doesn't say that because he knows deep down that to him, she is. Her and her impish smile and clever ideas. "She is now," he says instead, and it hurts his throat.

Ken only hums. Daigo looks back to his computer. "What do you get out of being here?"

Ken, just like the Akiyama Ryo of the old tales, laughs. "Who knows?"


	7. And Love With Pain

7\. And Love With Pain

Homeostasis looks at him through Yagami Hikari's eyes, with none of the flaring exuberance that hides behind normally reddish-brown. Looks and looks, regards him.

"She says hello," she says in that mechanical cassette tape voice that Hime had used whenever it happened, whenever things grew so bad emotions were irrelevant.

And then she falls backwards and almost cracks her own skull. Daigo has only a few instincts that remember to work on time but he manages to catch her before she hits her head.

Her cat looks at him with disgust and fear. Maybe not disgust, but distrust. That would make sense according to Gennai's records. "Explain."

Daigo smiles thinly. "Why?"

She stares, for a moment at a loss. The other seven look at each other. "Because you're supposed to…?" ventures the Agumon, as if he doesn't believe it.

 _Adults don't explain things. They lie._ "You'd be better off not knowing, I think." Before they can ask, he runs away because he used to be courageous and to tell them that it's their own fault whats about to happen is not.

He carries Hikari to his van and knows the cat is following but that's fine. Yagami Hikari will be fine.

She won't die. She won't.

His heart thumps too loudly.

…

In the end, he panicked for no reason. She was anemic. That's the excuse the hospital gives him. What, does possession drain blood or something.

.. He's never considered that before.

Daigo waits for her to wake up, just long enough for Tailmon to sneak in. "Is she all right?"

Daigo nods quickly. "Just a touch of anemia. Make sure she gets something to eat when she gets out."

Tailmon dips her head and begins to wash her head. Daigo turns away. He's tempted to leave, but that would be irresponsible as a teacher. And he's only a part-time teacher, but still. "We're infected," Tailmon says eventually. All of us. With the virus from Meicoomon."

Daigo schools his face while his stomach drops. He'd considered the possibility, they all had. Then they would need to be rebooted too and then-

He doesn't want to think about it.

"There's no cure, is there?" She sounds resigned, tired. Old.

Daigo lets out a single breath. Then, he opens his eyes. "You should tell your partners."

"Why?"

Daigo smiles bitterly. "Because mine knew the truth and didn't tell me."

" _There was always going to be a cost, Dai. You had to know that. You have to have known. How could you fight and not know?"_

Because they were children. Children weren't supposed to know these things.

"Besides, Izumi-kun might think of something we adults have not." He tries to sound casual, fists his free hand into the Digivice sewn into an extra pocket. "So he should know at least."

Tailmon thinks, then watches Hikari's face scrunch. "I see. What about their happiness?"

Daigo goes to alert the doctor. "Are they really happy not knowing if it's going to happen anyway?"

It's a hard question to answer and hypocritical advice to follow.


	8. To Soar the Skies

8\. To Soar the Skies

Nothing happens for days.

Then his digivice screams.

It howls like a wild animal, so loudly that it definitely cannot be mistaken for a cell phone. He has to beg off the meeting to see it, to answer and image after image flies upon its tiny round screen, spiraling from many orbs to one lone one covered in loops, orbits. Planets. So much power. Too much power.

His Hime's power.

No not his. He scowls to himself and wipes it away with a smile. He has to hurry. The children have limited time and he hopes, he prays that they have made precautions.

Ichijouji Ken blocks his path. If he is Ken. He could be. He has no idea what Professor Mochizuki was after and he was never interested. His duty had been to the world with his goggles. And his friend , but no one thinks about her anymore. No one should. She's supposed to be dead and gone.

He had sent his friends emails. They haven't answered. IT was probably illegal.

"You're really letting this happen."

Daigo regards him thoughtfully, smile twitching to fall. "So are you. You can go and try and kill her, if you want to."

Ken sneers and he looks like those bad pictures of Ichijouji Osamu, those might-have-been videos when the boy was grilled too far. "I did a lot of awful things, but I never _killed_ someone else's partner."

 _That you're aware of._

Daigo always wonders that. If he ended up killing someone else's partner by accident. Or on purpose. If survival meant more than the happiness of other people.

"Does happiness matter more than the world?" he asks himself. Then he shakes his head and steps around the young man. He feels the scowl at his back and it goes ignored. Daigo has to bear it and ignore it at the same time.

Gods, it's hard.

…

The Digimon do not go gentle. There is no denying that.

They struggle against the mess of their infection with all their might. Their eyes go white and normal and back and their evolutions restrain themselves against striking their humans. They chase each other around and around Meicrackmon's dimension and Meicrackmon leaps for them.

The humans are stuck in time, and the moment is so similar that it _hurts._

Then something ripples.

It's not the countdown. It's the air itself. It's the everything in the universe that isn't right and makes sense all at once.

This is the reboot. This is the moment that space, time, everything, resets in another world. It weakens. It fragiles.

He's felt it before. How many times.

For a moment, he looks down and thinks – no, sees-

Her. Her with his goggles on her neck.

She looks scared.

"It's okay," he whispers. "I'll be there soon."

She shakes her head. She looks like she's going to cry.

Then she's gone, and Daigo is wiping his own eyes.

Then, being an adult once more, he calls parents, guardians, and leaves the Chosen be.

All he can do is wait now.


	9. On Your Own Wings

9\. On Your Own Wings

They don't have to wait long.

Bakumon hasn't left his side. Bakumon, theoretically, hasn't been infected. But then, he's never been close enough to Meicoomon to be. At least, Daigo hopes. He's shown no symptoms, if not being slightly more driven than before. But maybe that's always been there and it's only now with an achievable goal that the idea is coming out. Or that its ideal is realizing itself.

Still. He wakes up one morning with Ichijouji Ken's equipment in his mailbox. He doesn't need it. But they might. The Chosen will, he corrects in his head. But the puppet strings are twining now. The puppet has begun to move. He's probably the puppet. He doesn't care.

But he still waits and with Bakumon trapped inside the wait is hopelessly painful. For all his maturity and desires, Bakumon is still a child and a needy child at that. Even Liollmon wasn't like this.

...Will he get to see him again too? As him, and happy and supportive and actually giving a damn about the little things again?

He can only hope. It's the first time that Daigo's honestly thought about it at all. Guilt squirmed in his stomach, held with the logical ideal that Digimon came back when they died, in eggs, surely but it was not permanent until there was no data left. And they had barely died. So it would have been fine.

But now things could be different. They would redo things. They would have a new chance. Even if the enemy had returned… well, others would be there and he could, he could train them. Yes, he could do what hadn't been done for him and actually _help._ They had needed help, knowledge, anything, in order to survive. If they had known what Homeostasis was capable of them Hime wouldn't have died. If they had known how difficult the Dark Masters had been from the onset, so many deaths could have been avoided.

For a moment, Daigo had to sit back and _breathe._ This was the first time he had felt ambition in so long, had felt a way he could be needed that wasn't just 'do your job everyday and pay your bills'.

This was something he could do, once it was over. Or once they found her. Them. Everyone.

* * *

A piece was missing.

Mochizuki was missing.

The others had gone. He had seen to that. But Mochizuki hadn't been there. So where was she now? He needed to find her, or at least see to her. What if she was hurt? What if she was dead? He had gotten her involved in all of this. The least he could do was give her her normal life, her healed partner back.

Bakumon follows him, but it's probably more out of obligation than anything. He doesn't care for Meicoomon, or anyone else. Only his partner. Digimon are wrathful creatures, he thinks to himself. It's an absent thought, but really, he should be thinking harder about it. But it doesn't matter. What matters is now.

His thoughts echo, ironically so.


	10. Away From Tears

10\. Away From Tears

The smell numbs something in his bones. It's so heartlessly familiar.

Daigo walks. On and on. He feels the numbness in his feet, the agony in his legs. Bakumon doesn't want to rest, and neither does he.

Their usefulness has ended. Now, they need to get what they came for and quietly, faithfully, disappear. It's the safest thing, really. It's for the best. What will he tell Hime's parents, though?

Nothing. Same as before. It wouldn't make sense to them anyway. Let them mourn her. What would he say if she asked? Nothing. It was easier to lie by omission.

The land is harsh on his feet, so harsh. He will probably break his shoes to rags by the time he gets to where he must go. Bakumon doesn't care, though e never really would. All he cares about is Hime now, the person he needs.

Their own first love.

Daigo pauses for water and splashes his face in a river. He groans to himself.

"What am I even doing?"

If only… if only he could go back in time physically too. Wouldn't that be incredible?

…

He doesn't remember this flower field well at all. Bakumon must because he's soaring way overhead. He can tell where it is through this endless amount of forest. Daigo goes slower. He has to. He lost his shoes. He doesn't feel any blisters, nor the shortness of breath. All he feels is the steady thudding of joy in his heart and can anyone blame him?

Hime, he thinks. I'm coming for you. I'm coming to save you now.

This time, she will not die. Definitely not.

None of them will let that happen.

…

Mochizuki Meiko wakes up alone in the nighttime. In the Digital World's nighttime.

She should be afraid. After all, she's never been here before. That said, she certainly has survived in the wilderness before. On nights when Father was too busy to come home and mother was bored. On days where the babysitter didn't want to be bothered, she had spent so much time in the mountains, fending for herself. He endurance was strong, her stamina was good.

Even loneliness is tolerable.

Was Meimei hungry, she wondered? She was likely scared and lonely and needed someone. But at the cost of needing others, she had hurt so many people.

Meiko grits her teeth. No. _They_ had hurt so many people. Meimei with her claws, Meiko with her cowardice. She needed to get stronger. She just had to take this as an opportunity. She tries to smile to herself. Yes, that was what she would do. She would use this to get stronger and then-

Her thoughts are cut off by a rustling bush. She jumped in its direction as it rustled a little more. Fairly carelessly at that. Maybe it was a big animal… Meiko can't help but jump behind a large tree trunk as out toppled…

A little girl.

Short brown hair, bright amber eyes, skin tanned by the sun. Dressed in gentle pinks and lavendars, she looked like any little girl who would wander about. Except what was she doing here?

The girl pauses and looks at the ground. Then she looks at the sky. "I thought you said something fell," she said to nothing in particular.

Then, Meiko hears it, the sound of many softly flapping wings.

The child pouts. "Of course I believe you. But I don't have eyes in the back of my head!"

As her expression changes, as she moves, Meiko remembers a harmless set f photographs on a slightly dusty mantle.

Himekawa Maki was standing there, alive when she should have been dead. Daigo-san's… best friend.

But how?


	11. And Awash With Hope

11\. And Awash With Hope

He can't find her.

Panic builds Like a volcano. His feet are bleeding. His body is burning. Bakumon has started crying once every few hours. He goes off too far. And Daigo worries, but he cannot say so. He cannot make him worse. When they find Hime, he has to smile. He has to be able to smile.

It gets hard.

It gets so hard.

Then his heart stops and he sees and sees-

Mugendramon.

And Gennai.

No. No. They killed you we killed you.

 _Everything gets rebooted. Hime-chan, the world, the them._

He remembers now. He remembers that instant of seeing her. And her face, so unhappy. So scared and sad and knowing. She knew and she had always known, had always been there

Daigo hadn't been dreaming her and now and now and-

He stops walking. He can't move anymore. He slumps to his knees and sobs with a smile on his face.

It's all he can do to do either of those things.

Bakumon ignores him. And Liollmon-

He doesn't appear.

* * *

Himekawa Maki is not what Meiko imagined.

Little Maki does skip every third step like Daigo-said. She rarely trips and she smiles with only her mouth. Her eyes are like the setting sun.

But she does not have the feeling of childlike innocence. She smile with her mouth but her eyes have something that human eyes don't have, that normalcy and pleasure and falliable irrationalty is missing. There is a little girl here, but she's not too.

"We're going to meet Ni~ji then?"

"Niji?"

"Daigo!" Maki skips her third and sixth, skips and spins on her tenth. It is repeated and practiced. "They told me so. They told me he was here. Your friends are here."

Meiko frowns and then it slips off like water. It's easier to smile now, perhaps due to the presence of this girl. "They?"

"The lights." Maki looks at her with those eyes and seems very odd. "The balance lights. They talk to me a lot. They… they talk to me all the time." She smiles wearily. "They told me I was special. It's bad to tell kids that, my mom said."

Meiko, thinking of the grave with no body, believes this. "Your mom's smart. Have you..." she pauses. "Have you seen a big orange cat around here?"

"Meicoomon?"

Meiko smiles, nods too quickly. "Yes!"

Maki nods. "She is scared. She is looking for you. Things are dying again." She looks at her tiny hands. "Your partner's so angry." She frowns for a second. "I wonder where mine is."

And it all clicks together like a plug to an outlet.

Daigo-san, kind, friendly Daigo-san, who fretted after Meicoomon and tripped over his words, had used them. He had used them all for what? Meiko looks at little Maki, who is now just ahead of her. For this little girl. Her friends, if she could call them that, lost everything for her sake.

"So now you know."

Ichijouji Ken walks into view. "I'm glad. So, will you help us?"


	12. We Will Make

12\. We Will Make

The Chosen are coming.

The heirs are coming.

Meiko knows this by sight. Her heart is saying that her Mei-chan, her Meicoomon is near. Meicoomon needs her. And she would get her. She would save her.

And then there would be yelling. Lots of yelling.

Meiko looks down at the rustle of her skirt. Himekawa reaches her waist but grips her skirt and that's the most wrong and right thing in the world. She doesn't seem scared, but then, why would she? She had died once, if she remembers, and she had survived in this world all this time by herself despite something, perhaps despite everything. Maybe she knows.

Ichijouji Ken, hair spiked up, watches them both. "You're not trembling."

Meiko nods. "I-I've survived before."

"Ah." He looks away. "We tried to stop them. From doing this. They didn't, obviously. I can't say I blame them."

"They were chosen for it." Maki nods, sharp and decisive. "They had to be that kind of stubborn."

"But you were gone." Ken's face twists, painful and sharp. "They couldn't get you back."

Why won't he just say dead, she has to know by now?!

Maki only shrugs and looks down. "I dunno. They still had to try."

It's hard to feel resentment, Meiko thinks. Because she should resent Meicoomon for what trouble she's gotten her into. But she knows her Digimon misses her, needs her so much, so badly. Is it forgivable? Isn't it just as much her fault as her partner's?

 _It would be easier for everyone if they realized the answer to that question without issue._

Ken's face is wan and tight. "He's lucky."

"Not really." Himekawa presses her fingers in the nearest thicket. "It was just a miracle. Those bring calamities."

Then, she drops down, just out of range of a flying barrage of pink. Or rather, shot from the sky barrage of pink. Piyomon hits the ground and Sora rushes past them.

Meiko looks to her left. Ichijouji Ken is gone but for a rush of fabric and it takes another half a second to see where he is, having tackled the Kaiser on the other side. Meiko can't help but think someone else should take this action, can't help but imagine someone else belonging there.

But she can't imagine for long, because Meicoomon is attacking a _human_ and she can't let that happen.

…

While a battlefield erupts in chaos and explosions of light and darkness, Daigo has given up on walking.

Bakumon has fallen seven times. He doesn't get up this time, panting. He can barely cry, Daigo wets his mouth, eyes his ruined sandals.

Had this all been for nothing? Had he ruined all those lives and not even managed to save one in return?

Bakumon's blue eyes swivel to meet his and Daigo can't even clench his teeth properly. His lips try to turn but his vision blurs.

Then, softly, his Digivice begins to tremble. It shines a familiar, awful golden color, much like a pillar of light rising in the sky.

"Hime!" Bakumon lifts into the sky with that one word and flies away, leaving him alone.

Again.


	13. Our Tomorrow

13\. Our Tomorrow

He's wrong.

Bakumon is anyway. That light is not Himekawa Maki. That light is Yagami Hikari and the world is burning.

"Wonderful," the strange man shouts. "Now we have three for the price of one! Three to subdue that meddling child!"

Hikari trembles with the force of her own anger, the rawness of her pain. No one's voice will reach her now. Maki understands this so well, intimately well. She isn't stopping her. She cannot. She understands.

"You will not," she murmurs because she can't help it. She walks then skips, further away from Daigo, further from Bakumon. She's sure that's where she's going. It almost hurts to have the voices not anywhere near her, not hear the endless chatter. But it's fine. She knows. They are there for her, if she needs them. But she doesn't need them.

Ken is pinned by the mystery man with one hand. "You should have stayed buried, little human." He's crooning, fingers touching the scalp then lowering to the chin. Even though above them is a monster firing cannons overhead and a small pup has lost its mind, he is still completely undisturbed. Even through Meicoomon's frantic screaming, he is delighted.

What a monster this is.

This galls Ken, galls him so much that he lashes out with his back. It's an awkward balance, but it sends a heel into a stomach and that's enough to get away.

All the while, Maki keeps walking. In an ear that is unattached, she hears footsteps. But even that's irrelevant because the mysterious man is lunging for her mid-cough.

"So should you," he murmurs, stroking her cheek with a thumb.

Takenouchi Sora tackles him from behind, not even wincing at the deadly shriek above.

Everything is chaos. She must reorganize it.

The second Maki considers this however, she is scooped up into the air and is soon spinning through it. The sensation in her stomach is utter elation and she laughs too loudly.

"Bakumon!"

"We did it!" he whoops by her ear. "You're here, Hime! You're here! You're here!"

She wants to nod, to reassure him, to say yes this is it, he did well, and praise him. She opens her mouth to do so, and then-

She closes it and doesn't answer.

He doesn't even notice.

…

Just because he's not right doesn't mean he doesn't get it right.

Daigo leaves a trail of spots of blood when he runs. His coat is left behind. He is a mess of so many different things, so many warring, gleeful emotions that run their course and halt right in his gut.

"I'm coming," he pants, mad and terrified all at once. He hears his heartbeat desperate in his ears. But he crosses it, he makes it.

His Digivice screeches and sparks in his fingertips as a deadly clap of lightning jumps from a cannon horn and reaches for Meiko-

"Dive!"

His heart flutters and cleaves right in two.

The lightning strikes. His best friend falls again and does not rise.

Bakumon doesn't either.

Yagami Hikari snaps for a second time.


	14. A New World

14\. A New World

The Crest of Light is a powerful thing.

It has the power to rewrite reality itself, to break the laws of nature. Or to be precise, of a _Digital_ nature. There are no limits in a world that desires the light, that yearns for the darkness.

So when Hikari, Child of Light, of a kin to the small child bleeding from a wound that closes like the winking of an eye, calls for something, for anything, the world answers and it answers with joy and offerings.

Offerings to a god.

In irony a fallen angel rises from the depths of the cliffs and Mugendramon is cut to pieces like someone's ugly doll with a toddler holding scissors. The comparison is not entertaining.

But its source, a beautiful, fallen woman, dives down and rises up, continuing. Gash after gash wrecks the land.

The Chosen, in terror, make to flee.

Hikari stands alone in the chaos, alone in the destruction and chaos, staring up with clenched fists and bloodred eyes.

Then, wrists first, Daigo watches Maki rise. Her head lolls on its shoulders for a moment, snapping up and then showing eyes glowing with a contented rainbow of light. She doesn't look at him, not once. She doesn't call for Bakumon, not once.

This is wrong. This is completely wrong.

"This is what you wanted, isn't it?"

She's not speaking to him. She is looking at Hikari. She can't be speaking to him, to them. It's not possible. It's not right.

But then she turns and looks his way, haunting iridescence. "You called for me didn't you?" she said. Her voice is soft and sweet and low. She knows who she is talking to in a way she couldn't have known in life. There was so much more happiness to be found here. So much more relief, delight. "You wanted me to live, didn't you?" Her eyes flick above Daigo's messy hair and blistered feet to Bakumon's small frozen form emitting heavy white clouds of smoke.

"Hime..." Bakumon's blue eyes water with tears, watching the bloody wound close and stitch up without any awareness whatsoever..

"Niji." She looks at him, then up to Bakumon. "Bakumon."

Maki smiles, a small, youthful smile. Then the tears brush her eyes like eye shadow. "Why?" she whispers. "Why?"

…

Hikari doesn't understand.

This happens to her very often, her lack of understanding blinds her, not so much to reality. It just makes it harder for her to see possibilities. She has no reason to, in the end. Not really. She is just too tired to try. She doesn't want to try. Why bother?

Because while she is not Taichi and does not know this teacher like he, Yamato-san, and Sora-san do, she understands that this is a betrayal to everything that makes the Chosen who they are. She understands this much. Daigo-san caused this reboot for one person's sake. She understands this. She feels this, as the crest allows. The Crest makes her see why it all feels so necessary.

 _She cannot forgive it._


	15. And a New Future

_Warning for character death!_

* * *

15\. And A New Future

In the human world everything falls apart so quickly. Phones begin to fail, location immediately lost on maps, emails meeting a mosaic screen of death. All the while, on any available speaker, even ones turned to mute, something roared.

In the Digital World, while Hikari raged and Daigo despaired, the stranger had strangled Mochizuki Meiko… and snapped her neck.

There is a strange unreality when it comes to Digimon. When they die, their humans do not die with them, at least not on the outside. On the inside however, it is at least mentioned. When a human dies, something in the Digimon's soul goes away, now and forever.

Bakumon, deep down, has gotten his wish. Meicoomon is just like him now, only much more powerful. Just like him, only so much more. So much worse.

For she is the Libra, the keeper of Balance. What happens when a lodestone is cracked? What happens when a keeper tilts her own scales?

All the adult can do is watch. The children can only watch.

Hikari can do something about it, but she is too far gone in mind and body and soul to want to.

Honestly, Daigo, slumped on the ground can't blame her.

The stranger man, the Gennai mockery, cackles on. He holds _her_ up by her snapped neck. He holds her and waves her like a ragdoll. It's the most obscene thing any of them have ever seen.

Well, almost all of them.

Daigo has seen corpses and blood many a time in his chosen days. He's not fazed by it. He's _angry_ about it, angry enough to see through tears. But he's not losing his mind. Bakumon is however, full of roaring, clear joy as the being that was once Meicoomon rises and rises and-

Thud.

A giant paw slams on the ground, heavy armor and full of rage pain.

Meicoomon screams like a banshee and meets a beautiful scythe. Ofanimon meets her again and again, blow for blow, expression of cold fury meeting inconsolable hatred and loathing. Below the Chosen, the ground cracks and splinters like the shell of an egg.

As it breaks, Ichijouji Ken begins to climb down. Unnoticed by most since his injury, but he still goes strong. He tries and nearly falls. The word is nearly.

Maki just watches, not like the small child she looks like, but the new thing she is, patient and well knowing. Like a goddess. Like the god.

Maki looks at him with those crystal tears gone from her face. She smiles wanly once more.

"Will history repeat itself?" she asks him. "Will we change it? How do we change?"

Humans change with ease. They are fickle, twisted, changed. Digimon are much slower, more likely than not they do not change. Not on their own. There is no way to change by force, for anyone. But Digimon understand force better than anyone. And Hikari has come to acknowledge the use of force, somewhere between the screaming and heartbroken sobs of pain.

"Bakumon," Maki utters softly through the trees. "To me."


	16. Will Come

16\. Will Come

Finally.

The word thunders in his head, so desperate, so joyous. She had called his name.

Digimon partners were nothing if not full of love, nothing if not tied to their humans through every zero and one. They were connected more than any other. Losing her had been a gaping bloodless wound. But now she was here. Now she was calling him.

If Bakumon died right now, it would be without regret.

But no, he can't do that, he realizes as he dives from the thundering sky to her voice. HE can't do that. If he does she will be as sad as he was, he can't let that happen. He never will.

Bakumon floats to her and hugs her tight. He's crying. Daigo manages to see this and worry his lip until he tastes blood rather than sweat and guilt rather than bile. He steps forward as Bakumon scoots back. He looks almost too eager for this future command, for this Himekawa Maki. Has he noticed the difference yet?

If he has, he'll never tell. As far as he's concerned, this is his partner.

 _(Daigo shouldn't be so surprised. In another reality, Himekawa Maki is certain too.)_

"We need to stop them," Maki says. "No matter what. There's only us this time."

She remembers. She remembers, she remembers everything.

Bakumon hesitates. "You could die again." He's honest where Daigo cannot be, not to himself, not out loud. "I don't want that. I don't think I can let it happen again." He looks, finally, at the raging ball of light that Meicoomon is swirling inside of. "I can't become like that, Hime."

There's an awful finality. Daigo can't help but think of his father's closed study door when he hears it, filling him with dread and a vomit-worthy emotion that he can't describe, not even to himself.

Maki, however, only smiles in the face of it. "That's all right," she says. "You won't have to. Not ths time. We've found the way. But before that-"

Ofanimon Falldown Mode swoops over their heads, face like stone despite its exploding destruction from every swing of its scythe.

"We take care of that," she finishes.

…

Daigo has never run so fast with blisters in his life, and that includes their first day, chased by ravenous Okuwamon.

But he does it. Not because Hime says so, but because the blood is roaring in his ears, begging for sustenance, begging for the old man's head. For everything he's said, for every little morsel. Daigo has no illusions about his own part to play, but he will at the very least get this bastard, for what he's said. For what he's done.

For what he wants.

When he reaches him, it's to find him pinning a struggling Takeru to the ground with one hand and Yamato's hands around his neck in a worthy stranglehold.

Takeru's foot shoots up, hits bone, aims lower. There's a squeak of pain and Daigo scoops up a rock.

He doesn't miss.


	17. With Blood

17\. With Blood

His throat shot sends the man choking and the Chosen retreat. Good. Maybe they understand deep down in that way: this is his fight first and foremost. When Daigo gets a bit closer, he sees Ichijouji Ken, curled in an unresponsive ball. Blood trails from his neck.

'Gennai' laughs, a wheezing cackle and lunges up. He barely manages to not trip over his robes as Daigo counters with a single-minded charge.

Baihumon would be proud… and exasperated. How many times had they talked about it, about not fighting an enemy with straightforward words and experiences? Innumerable. But he's not around is he? He hasn't been around in years. They all haven't been around in years.

Except Hime is here, here and starting to glow like a rising sun.

Gennai laughs again. "You really think she's her returned? You think that the reboot really succeeded."

Daigo swallows because-

No. He doesn't. He doesn't believe it. It's humanly impossible, for one. For another, even in front of him, she's barely acknowledged him once. She's not even looked at him. His best friend would have looked at him.

That said. He also remembers the presence following him where ever he went, encouraging. He remembers the little feeling of being gently watched, carefully worried over. Her sad eyes, her tears.

"Yes," he says and he slams the rock into a grinning face. "I made her cry. Only a living Hime-chan would cry. Bakumon and I… we're the only ones who could have caused that." Gennai drops, still laughing. Daigo feels all his hesitation drain away with each swing.

He thinks of Hime turning into dust.

He thinks of the snap of Meiko's neck.

He thinks of the screaming children.

He thinks of telling his boss his daughter won't have a corpse.

He thinks of this old man's bitter laughter.

Daigo drives the weapon home one last time.

…

Gennai isn't exactly wrong. The Himekawa Maki who died over a decade ago is not the one who is walking about right now. That is impossible. What is possible is her memory. What is possible is to recollect her and to reform her. A catalyst exists. And the world is broken up enough to allow it.

Homeostasis is happy to continue its work in this world, whether it really understands the good or ill it will bring about, Maki herself isn't entirely sure. She just knows that important things can and will be done by her hand.

She has to ignore the Child of Light though, and her mourning. If she doesn't the power will route the wrong way. And that's just not allowed.

Bakumon responds like always, eager to please, eager for the fight. And more than Hikari, more than Gennai, more than Meicoomon, something else resonates with the power thrumming within her very being.

Ichijouji Ken lets out a noise like a dying animal, echoed across the four corners of the island. Creatures warp and twist, forming shapes once familiar to her eye. They cry out.


	18. And Acceptance

18\. And Acceptance

Orochimon. Triceramon. Delumon. The three arise.

More and more. More and more. Human children form like ghost faces. The three lost, Daigo vaguely realizdes

The air twists. And with that singular twist forms a three great monsters, their familiar warm season colors now dried out and dead.

"At last," crows the messenger of the lost god. "We are free."

Gennai giggles like a fool, so sure and satisfied. He is like Bakumon, Daigo realizes. His master have arrived to praise him. If this is Gennai and not the pretender. If any of this is real. He's sure it is. The Digital World makes wishes and dreams come true, even if we regret it.

He pauses. There is no fourth. There is no silver tiger. Is it possible? Could it be?

"Baihumon?" he murmurs.

His skin thrums. _Yes. Yes._

 _Why the radio silence? Why the wait?_

 _Because you wouldn't hear me even if I had been loud._

The answer seems so simple and adult that it hurts, so Daigo responds in kind and bites back the retort that he wants to give. "What do we do?" he says instead.

 _Resist. Rebel. Fight._

 _What I've always been doing._

Maki is running now, running towards the stone wall that is the Child of Light. She doesn't care about the state of her shoelaces or the fact that the world is crumbling beneath her feet. She doesn't seem to notice the light that is streaming off of her in waves because she's leaped onto Hikari's back. The teenager screams. Her partner screams. The three answer and the air tears.

But Maki doesn't stay, pushing herself over thin shoulders. She leaps and as she does, the fourth rises, a great, matted monster. Daigo swallows. Well, so much for that.

 _No time. Help her._

 _How?_

His Digivice beeps like it's by his ear instead of by his pocket. Bakumon is flying up and up and he bursts with golden light.

The eight Chosen light up. The monster that was Meicoomon screams pain and joy and longing.

Four becomes one. The great monstrous copper dragon roars. A great, awful battle begins.

…

Daigo opens his eyes eventually. The air is silent. No one is moving. The world hung suspended in a singular moment of blood and violence.

Daigo silently decides he must give answers when this is over. He will take these children home and tell them everything. He will be the adult he was supposed to be. Or at the very least, he will try.

A warm feeling washes over him, and for a moment, Daigo is ten years old with his plastic and leather smoking in the dirt and the final battle is back in his hands. For a moment, he is not alone.

Daigo lifts the small, battered device from his pocket one more time.

This time, his best friend doesn't scream. She smiles and laughs and the world turns around her. The pieces move once more. Their ally falls to pieces.

All that's left is Bakumon, fading away in the light of dawn.


	19. Of All

19\. Of All

When the light fades into a normal sun, the Gennai they all knew was nowhere to be seen. Ichijouji Ken is gasping for breath once more, his friends limp rag dolls that are fussed over by their friends.

Maki is gone but then that's not a shock. Her footprints are deep gouges into the earth.

Mochizuki's Meiko's body is fading slowly, like it's defying the truth with all of its might. Maki is right beside it, looking at the twisted neck with solemn eyes. She places a hand on the thin, heavy shoulder.

"You can't save her," he croaks when he reaches her. "You can't."

"Probably not," she agrees. She is still serene. She doesn't even listen to the monsters die. "But I can make it better."

When the rainbow fades, they are back on Earth and no one is all right.

...

Daigo does not normally write letters.

He does not normally sit on his couch with a pen in hand, chewed to the nib and watch the sun rise. He usually is fast asleep, slumped next to a cold meal. He sometimes wakes up with a hangover. Not today.

He wants to say he had this all planned out, that there was someone who could arrest him and try him for manipulating teenagers to doing dirty work that never panned out. There is not. There is only his guilt to act as his handcuffs and the disappearance of Mochizuki Meiko to haunt his thoughts.

He wonders if, like Maki, time will bring her back to them even if just for a moment. He wonders if these children, young people, can learn what he didn't and not try to play the games that god wants.

Daigo puts the words down for a moment and takes in the sun.

Then he picks up his phone and dials.

…

The florist picks flowers of peace and mourning but Daigo admits he knows nothing about flowers so he just thanks the lady and goes on his way.

He even has incense t burn this time.

Daigo sits in front of the two graves, alone. He doesn't speak. He doesn't even think, honestly. What is there to think about? He fucked up and now a little girl and an innocent Digimon are dead… and probably not coming back either.

But he got Hime-chan back, kind of. He thinks. The worlds are still in existence. They might even be better than they had previously been. He got a happy ending. He even got the ending he wanted.

And yet.

His stomach roils.

All of this was his fault. His and Bakumon's. But mostly his. He had been meant to be the adult.

Daigo sat down in front of his best friend's grave and let tears fall silently over the picked white petals.

 _Should I forgiven for this?_

For all the loss and pain, for repeating history? No, of course not. Not in his own opinion.

 _Will I be forgiven for this?_

The ghost that is not a ghost tugs his fingers and disappears into the wind, and Ichijouji Ken walks past his row to another gravestone some distance away.

Yes, yes it is very likely.


End file.
